LIFE OF DAVID LIVINGSTONE, LL.D. 



delight, for his memory was stored with a never-ending stock of stories, 

 many of which were wonderfully like those I have since heard while 

 sitting by the African evening fires. Our grandmother too, used to sing 

 Gaelic songs, some of which, as she believed, had been composed by 

 captive Highlanders languishing among the Turks. 



The reverence of your true Highlander for his ancestors, and his 

 knowledge of them and their doings for many generations, have been 

 frequently the subject of mirth to the Lowlanders or Sassenachs, as they 

 are termed by the Celts; but in such instances as that of the family of 

 which we are treating, these feelings are not only virtues, but become the 

 incentives to bold and manly effort in the most trying circumstances. 

 Livingstone tells us that his grandfather could rehearse traditions of the 

 familiy for six generations before him. One of these was of a nature to 

 make a strong impression on the imaginative and independent mind of 

 the boy, even when almost borne down with toil too severe for his years. 

 He says " One of these poor hardy islanders was renowned in the district 

 for great wisdom and prudence; and it is related that, when he was on 

 his death-bed, he called all his children around him, and said, 'Now, in 

 my lifetime, I have searched most carefully through all the traditions I 

 could find of our family, and I never could discover that there was a 

 dishonest man among our forefathers. If therefore, any of you or any of 

 your children should take to dishonest ways it will not be because it runs 

 in our blood; it does not belong to you. I leave this precept with you: 

 Be honest!'" 



"With pardonable pride and some covert sarcasm, Livingstone points out 

 that at the period in question, according to Macaulay, the Highlanders "were 

 much like Cape Kaffres, and any one, it was said, could escape punishment 

 for cattle stealing by presenting a share of the plunder to his chieftain." 

 Macaulay's assertion was true of the clans and bands of broken men who dwelt 

 near the Highland line ; but even in their case these cattle-lifting raids hardly 

 deserved the designation of pure theft ; as even up to the middle of the last 

 century they looked upon the Lowlanders as an alien race, and consequently 

 enemies whom it was lawful to despoil. The conduct of the needy and am- 

 bitious nobles who drove them from their native glens and mountains, where 

 their fathers had lived and hunted for centuries, with a view to possessing 

 themselves of their inheritance, too often furnished a sufficient excuse for the 

 deeds of violence and plunder which figure so prominently in the annals of the 

 country down even to the days of Greorge II. 



Like most of the Highlanders, his ancestors were Roman Catholics, but 

 when Protestantism got fairly established in Scotland, the apostacy of the 

 chief was followed by that of the entire clan. Livingstone says, "they were 

 made Protestants by the laird (the squire) coming round, with a man having 



